This piece has been updated to include a statement by Shmuley Boteach. America’s right-wing Jewish community has recently been split over a curious question: whether to cozy up to Qatar. After a number of American Jewish Zionist leaders visited the tiny Gulf country rich in gas, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach began denouncing both Qatar and the…
The Qatari government has recently enlisted a new proxy fighter: Jews. More specifically, American Zionist Jews. Over the past few months, the tiny Gulf country has been bringing American Zionist leaders to visit with its ruler, the emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. The list of recent visitors, first reported by Haaretz, was made up…
(JTA) — The president of the Zionist Organization of America is the latest pro-Israel figure to visit Qatar and meet with its leader. “They invited me to go a number of times – in September, October, November and December,” Morton Klein told Haaretz on Monday, confirming his visit earlier this month. “At first I refused…
“I have my religion, and you have your religion.’ Qur’an (109:6) One of my best students, Assad, came up to me one day after Introduction to International Relations class to ask, with a smile, if he could touch me. Turning to his friend with a twinkle in his eyes, he grinned that he had never…
An attempt by the Qatari government to break its international isolation by reaching out to the American Jewish community is being met with pushback. The small Gulf nation has been under pressure for months after neighboring countries, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed a boycott on Qatar because of its support for terrorism and its close…
Gaza. It’s the four-letter word of the Middle East. Nobody wants to say it. Nobody wants to think about it. Yet the contentious strip of land controlled by Hamas issued last week described living conditions as “more and more wretched” and predicted that the coastal enclave would become unlivable as soon as 2020. Electricity is…
As recently as this spring, the Kushner family was seeking a badly-needed investment from a Qatari businessman to refinance their tower at 666 Fifth Avenue. After negotiations seemed to break down, Kushner led the behind-the-scenes fight to harden the U.S. position on Qatar, according to The Intercept. 666 Fifth Avenue, often hailed as the defining…
(JTA) — Qatar has become the third country to ban the screening of the movie “Wonder Woman” because lead actress Gal Gadot is Israeli. The film had been scheduled to premiere in Qatar on Thursday, and was being promoted by local theater chains VOX Cinemas Qatar and Novo Cinemas. But in the days before its…
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